[Jamie]

The Web Accessibility Initiative(WAI) was set up by the W3C in order to provide guidelines and techniques for making webpages accessible to everyone.

The guidelines that are given in this document are designed to help you produce accessible web sites. I have split the guidelines into three areas, content accessibility, functionality and special cases.

Content Accessibility

In order to comply with this section the following checkpoints must be checked. Most of these are common sense and you will find most sites only fall short on one or two points.

• Always use the "alt" attribute when using "img" tags
• Don't use a "marquee" or "blinking" text
• Make sure the document can still be read, and understood, without a style sheet
• Provide text links when using image maps
• Don't use tables for layout - only use them to convey data in a table format
• Don't use frames. They take away user control and there are far better alternatives.
• Ensure background and foreground colours contrast - this is for obvious reasons.
• Don't represent anything with just colour i.e. "Click on the green link"

These points are designed to allow the content of your site the be accessed by all.

Functionality

This area focuses on the interoperability of the web page (How well it can be transfered from one browser to another) and its functionality. The majority of the guidelines involve good web programming practices. If you already markup your sites using the latest specification, eXtensible Hyper Text Markup Language (XHTML 1.1), you will find your site already complies with most of these guidelines.

• Labels must be used to designate form fields.
• Ensure that pages are still usable if all applets/scripts etc are turned off
• Test your site in a number of different browsers at different resolutions. I recommend at least 2 different graphical browsers (IE and Firefox) and at least 1 text based browser (Lynx) although the more the better.
• Place holders must be used in otherwise empty input boxes.

Special Cases

So we have covered content and functionality in normal browsers, but what about screen readers, spiders and other such applications? There are a few more points that must be addressed, most of these points will again be covered if you use valid markup.

• You must identify the natural language of the document
• Adjacent Links must be separated by something more than whitespace, separating with break or paragraph tags will not work - This is to help screen readers that cannot yet distinguish between links that are together.

Rounding off

That completes my introduction into creating an accessible site. If you have any queries or spot any mistakes or typo's please contact me

Validating

It is always important to use a validator to check the main points of your markup. Remember to also check things validators cant such as colour contrasts

Bobby is a great validator to check your sites for accessibility issues. It also gives you a list of things t check that the validator can't such as colour contrasts.

If, after your best efforts, you cannot create an accessible page, provide a link to an alternative page that uses W3C technologies, is accessible, has equivalent information (or functionality), and is updated as often as the inaccessible page. This will ensure your content is available to anyone who wants it.

Thankyou for your time.

Jamie

very good.. all must read this very informative to those not in the knowledge

[Jamie]

Thanks for the reply...

I would encourage everyone to read and implement this into your development. If the web becomes more accessible it is better for us all.

Jamie

[MmixX]

yeah! very informative! thanks for posting :)

[Jamie]

Thanks for the feedback. Accessibilty is a subject I am very passionate about so any questions, please ask.

Jamie

[spottedhog]

Not a question.... just a suggestion.....

Creating an alternate CSS file that has larger font size is another way to improve accessability for those with poor eyesight.

[Jamie]

Originally Posted by spottedhog

Not a question.... just a suggestion.....

Creating an alternate CSS file that has larger font size is another way to improve accessability for those with poor eyesight.

That is very true, although there needs to be a clear way of accessing the style sheets such as a link sayng "View a Large Font version of this site". Or somehing along thoughs lines, this can easily be done using php.

Jamie